soapstone and mahogany
by countingthenights
Summary: Three other people who knew the Disreputable Dog, and one more.


Notes: First written approximately five months ago, when I finished rereading the trilogy in anticipation of Clariel. No, I have not read Clariel. Yes, I'm slow. Let's please try to refrain from spoilerish talk.

* * *

soapstone and mahogany

_three other people who knew the disreputable dog, and one more._

* * *

**i**. sameth

She often visited the tower workshop where Sameth spent most of his time, climbing up the winding stairs tirelessly until she felt the warmth from the perpetually-smoking Charter forge seeping into her bones.

Ever since their return to Belisaere, Sam had closeted himself in his workshop to work on a replacement hand for his aunt. He only really needed her around for the first time, when he took detailed measurements and sketches of her remaining hand, her left hand, but he didn't ask to be left alone either, when she came back again. Nor the time after that. Never.

Whenever the silence of her palace room, much larger than the study she was given in the Great Library, got too much to bear, she fled to the refuge of metalwork and muttered curses. Without the Dog, such a room felt too large. Silent soapstone was no replacement for warm skin and warm barks. Without the Dog, any room felt too cold.

She could not always talk to Sam, of course. When he worked, it was as though he was immersed in the flow of the Charter itself, out of her reach. She mustn't distract him; watching him work the Wallmakers' magic was enough, in any case. The magic he inherited from the Third and the Fifth Bright Shiners was as familiar to her as it was foreign.

Sometimes, Sam would remember his aunt quietly sitting on the bench, and set aside his work. His attentiveness first stirred up fond feelings within her, and eventually smiles, then laughs. Like she used to be, with the Dog.

_Looking after your old aunt_, she once joked.

_Looking after the Abhorsen-in-Waiting_, he replied, in the same affectionately ironic manner.

He was still looking after her now, as someone who she could feel at ease talking to. He spoke to her at length about the spells he was casting, the variations that he was trying out to make it better and stronger. When that topic ran dry, as it often did, he talked about the seasonal produce of Belisaere and the merchants that passed through in summer, Ellimere's chronic bossiness over seventeen years of his life and which of the Royal Guards were friendly enough to help him escape her, the different Perspectives assignments (that Lirael didn't have to participate in), the aqueducts that guarded the city for twenty years of anarchy – flowing, vivid conversations she could muster genuine interest in.

They never mentioned the Dog. Lirael could tell he wanted to talk about it, to tell her she could talk about it, but didn't know how to bring it up. She appreciated his concern, and thought that if there was anyone who could begin to understand the emptiness, it would be Sam. Because, long ago upon the Ratterlin, Sam was the first other person to meet the Dog.

And today, as Sam described the view from the top of the West tower at midwinter, she thought that the Dog would have been thrilled to be in Belisaere. New sights, new smells, and here Lirael was, holing herself up in the Palace listening to someone else talk about them instead. She would most certainly have received another bite from her friend. The thought was so ridiculous and yet, so dear to her, that she couldn't help but smile.

"Sam," said Lirael, cutting him off in the middle of a sentence about the deep watery greys of the sea, how the storminess of the waves become soothing from afar. "Can we go there now?"

"It's not winter yet," he automatically protested. Then she saw his gaze twitch, to the bulge in her pocket and the small snout poking out of it, and backtracked. "But the view in fall isn't too bad either. I'll just put away some of this stuff…"

Belatedly, Lirael remembered the tools warming up in the forge, waiting to start work on a replacement hand for her. Perhaps she shouldn't have asked, but it was as though the Dog's impatience had possessed her. Besides, Sam didn't say anything about his work, so it should be fine. It all certainly felt natural enough.

Because before he was a Wallmaker, and before he was her nephew, he was her friend.

* * *

**ii**. mogget

The inside of the Paperwing felt no sturdier than the exterior suggested. Reclining so far that she feared she would tip out of the hammock-seat, with a tenacious hold on the rim, she made to breathe upon the silver plate that Ellimere said would teach her the marks to fly the craft.

The silver frosted over at her breath and cleared as quickly. One by one, the Charter marks to raise the craft appeared. Some were shared with weather-working magic that Lirael knew. Others were new, but she thought that she could summon them without too much difficulty.

Minutes passed, then hours. Time slipped away while she memorised the marks, as did her death-grip upon the Paperwing's rim.

When the last mark cleared, Lirael raised her eyes from the silver surface, feeling the strain as her eyes adapted to the sudden distant focus. She felt swathed by the beautiful red and gold that the Paperwing was painted in. It could fly, she knew. She could fly it.

Out of the corner of her eye, a flash of white darted along the wing, starkly pale against the lurid colours. Lirael struggled to sit up and look over the rim. She wasn't afraid, even though she had come to the hangar unarmed. There were Royal Guards stationed around, and all of them were experienced Charter mages. Though, it would be very embarrassing for the Abhorsen-in-Waiting to be rescued from a Free Magic threat by the Guard.

"Mogget?" Lirael whispered. She had not seen the white cat since leaving Forwin Mill, and presumed that he must have been out enjoying his newfound freedom, away from the Abhorsen and the House that he had been bound to for a millennium. Perhaps he didn't even go by his servant name anymore. "Or… Yrael?"

One pointy ear appeared over the edge of the Paperwing in response. It was shortly accompanied by the other and two green eyes. "Abhorsen-in-Waiting," the cat mewed back, somehow sounding sardonic even in those short words. "'Mogget' will suffice."

"Then 'Lirael' should suffice as well," Lirael replied shortly, subconsciously pulling at the loose sleeve of her dress to cover the stump of her hand.

"Very well." What little she could see of Mogget disappeared momentarily, as the cat crouched to jump up onto the rim, right next to Lirael's surprised face. Unlike when she first met him, he had no collar. The binding ring was entrusted to Sam when he was freed, and though no reason was given, Lirael understood why. Sam was the one who made the decision, and so should be the one to safeguard it.

Even though Mogget was no longer bound into cat shape, he still seemed to like being a cat. Lirael gave up her struggle to sit upright as Mogget stretched his lithe form and daintily padded his way around her. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

"What does it seem like I'm doing?" replied Mogget's voice from behind her. "Fishing?"

"No, I meant, what are you doing here in Belisaere?" clarified Lirael, as she reclined in the seat and tried to crane her neck to see behind her. "You didn't come back with us, so I thought…"

The sound of paws padding on laminated paper stopped. "It was on the way." To where, he didn't say. Then, without warning, he appeared under Lirael's good arm and nudged it with his damp nose, making the girl jump. "But onto more important things. Have you learned to fly this craft?"

"I learned the marks," she said, trying to regain her balance after her reaction to Mogget's shock. "But Ellimere said that I should try another time, when she or Sabriel can take the time to fly with me."

"And when will that be?" questioned Mogget, lightly springing into her lap. That rocked the Paperwing some more, and Lirael blindly reached for the nearest handhold. "When Kerrigor wakes and comes knocking, perhaps?"

Lirael frowned at his flippant remark. "That won't happen."

Mogget turned his sharp green eyes on her, and her frown faltered slightly. "Well, that aside," he said as he flicked his tail. "What's stopping you from trying now?"

"Because it's dangerous, of course! If something goes wrong I'll be miles up in the air, and I'm not about to try it when I can barely sit upright…" As she said it, she became aware of how irrelevant her physical condition was, since the Paperwing was borne by her mastery of weather magic. Even so, the excuse left her lips easily.

"You have flown before, have you not?"

"Flying as a barking owl is quite different," she protested.

Mogget's green eyes were boring into her, and it felt almost like an accusation. That she wouldn't trust his assessment of her abilities. That she wasn't bold enough, that she couldn't dare to try without the Dog to encourage her, to save her if anything went wrong. That she could certainly behave more independently than this.

Then she blinked, and Mogget looked away. "If you say so," he said indifferently, flicking his tail again. Without another word, he leaped off her lap and disappeared, probably into the storage compartments.

Sabriel and Ellimere would probably not be pleased if she were to fly off in the Paperwing right now anyway, she told herself.

On the other hand, it was also true that if the Dog were around, she would probably egg Lirael into taking off right now too.

Lirael shut her eyes and called the first marks for lifting winds to the front of her mind. Common sense dictated that this was stupid and foolhardy, and she quite agreed with it. But at the same time, she did want to try flying. She wanted to feel the Paperwing soaring, to feel the wind in her face as Lirael the human and not Lirael in a Charter skin. All she needed was enough encouragement to acknowledge that.

She pursed her lips and whistled, letting the marks flow out in the sound. The Paperwing began to rattle and rock violently, before it tipped off its stand to scuttle along the floor of the hangar. For a moment, she panicked and her whistle faltered, until Mogget appeared by her ear and shouted for her to keep whistling. She nodded, and as she recovered, the wind grew stronger, until the Paperwing was no longer scuttling but leaving the ground for seconds at a time and falling back down with painful thuds, with each successive lift-off going higher. From the rattles and rumbles around her, she could tell that the other Paperwings were also being whipped around by the wind, their laminated wings trembling with a sound like thunder.

"Keep your head down!" yowled Mogget over the cacophony, before he disappeared into the front of the Paperwing. Lirael barely had time to throw herself as far back as the hammock would let her and pull her hand away from the rim before the Paperwing scraped noisily against the top of the hangar entrance.

For several tense moments Lirael feared they were falling; then light poured into the cockpit, telling her that they were out in the open and gaining height. Lirael fought to raise her head against the wind that seemed to push her down at every turn. She had to be able to see where they were going, or else they'd crash into one of the palace towers.

The Paperwing went into a lazy rightward glide, and Lirael used the sudden loss in momentum to pull herself up. She could see the pale alabaster towers quickly being left behind them, and the city ahead. Her own eyes were nowhere as sharp as the barking owl's, but there was something about seeing the streets in vibrant colour and the soft shapes of the people walking below with the limits of human eyes.

"Turn a bit more to the right," Mogget directed, dabbing at his pink nose with a paw. "Don't want to end up over the city at this altitude."

Lirael complied by summoning a gentle breeze to change their direction. She felt light in the air, buoyed by the freedom and exhilaration of flying. The wind tossed her hair in all directions, but she couldn't let go of the only handhold to brush it out of her eyes. The early fall air was cool and carried the scent of dry crackling leaves, a smell that could not exist in the Glacier. _This is what Life smells like_, she thought, rather absurdly, and laughed.

Looking down, she could see a tiny Ellimere running out onto the courtyard, waving frantically, her mouth moving rapidly – shouting, in all likelihood, the actual words lost in the wind. Lirael stopped whistling to let the Paperwing drift by more slowly, holding out her free handless arm to watch the wide expanse of her sleeve flutter wildly in the air. She was only distantly aware of Mogget watching her with keen eyes.

This was stupid, this was reckless – what about landing? She hadn't thought about that – but she wouldn't worry about that now. With every taut breath she took, Lirael felt alive.

* * *

**iii**. nicholas

Lirael still preferred keeping her writing desk tidy. There were usually no more than two books, her owl pen, and an inkwell at any time. Today, however, a stack of discarded paper occupied half of the table, hastily put aside and less than neat in its presentation.

The owner of the desk herself was seated in front of it, gripping her pen with utmost concentration as she copied a draft of a letter placed in front of her. When Sam offered to send something of hers along with his regular correspondence to Nick, she gave it little thought before she accepted. In the aftermath of the binding and breaking, there had not been much time to talk, to even offer her thanks, before Nick returned south with the other Ancelstierrans.

Several hours after the fact, she had to accept that she was severely limited by her inability to write with her left hand.

With some effort, she had managed to condense her thoughts into one short letter. She was helped by the fact that, after thinking about it, there wasn't much she could say to Nick through a letter. Some things were better said in person, or not said at all, she thought.

It was possible that she might never meet Nick again, but she didn't think so. After all, the Dog sent him back from Death, and she would like to think that there was more meaning in that than mere whim. _When_ she would see him again, that was another question and she couldn't bring herself to think of the possibilities yet.

And so she set out to practice writing with her left hand, determined to make a good copy of her letter, so that it would look no different from one written with her right hand.

* * *

**iv**. kibeth

Death was as cold and tricky as she remembered, as she walked boldly down the First Precinct. Over her chest she wore her bandolier of bells; at her side, a Charter-spelled sword borrowed from the Royal Armoury, not a Wallmaker relic but strongly spelled nonetheless. One day, she will inherit the Abhorsen's sword as well, but for now it was scabbarded at Sabriel's side as she marched along the river.

It was her first time entering Death since the binding of Orannis, and the first time with her legendary half-sister at her side. No Dead challenged them, for none were so foolish as to challenge the Abhorsen. Were Lirael alone, they might have decided she was easy prey with her single hand and unremarkable sword; with the two of them, however, her office could not be mistaken.

Even so, there were some less intelligent than the others, and as they stepped through the First Gate and into the Second Precinct – Sabriel keeping up a confident pace that Lirael marvelled at – one of the Lesser Dead came scuttling at that over the river's surface, drawn by the spark of Life in them.

With nary a pause, Sabriel drew both sword and bell. Saraneth's deep voice echoed over the waters, as golden sparks flew from the blade that transfixed the Dead thing's throat.

Lirael was not as immediate, with her uncertainty as to whether to draw sword or bell. Her fingers briefly rested on the sword's hilt, before awkwardly fumbling with the bell-pouch. But she got it out without accident, holding it upright by its handle. Carefully, so as to not let it sound prematurely.

The bell was Kibeth, and the Charter marks on its mahogany handle left imprints on Lirael's palm. They were so familiar to Lirael, even if she couldn't understand them. For a brief moment, the familiar warmth made it feel like she had touched the Disreputable Dog's collar and had gained the comfort from knowing she wasn't alone in Death, like she did on her early journeys.

Sabriel stepped back and twisted her sword free in one swift motion, and Lirael took the chance to ring Kibeth in a simple figure eight. The bell played a capricious dance, quick and joyful, stirring the perpetual mist over the river into slow circles. More importantly, it gripped the Dead spirit in its irresistible call and walked it towards the Ninth Gate.

Lirael blinked. Was that a large dog-shaped shadow capering into the distance she saw?

She blinked again, and it was gone.

Sighing, she stowed the bell away, hardly hearing Sabriel's quick praise or her equally quick instruction to keep moving. The warmth of the Charter marks left her hand, replaced by the cold of the river, but Lirael didn't need to hold Kibeth to know that the essence of her friend would accompany her until the end. Would remain with her until she walked to the Ninth Gate for the last time.

Lirael felt a smile growing, and with a lighter heart, set off to catch up with Sabriel.

* * *

end


End file.
